ASU establishes first-ever charter

November 12, 2014

Arizona State University has announced its first official charter, a comprehensive document focusing the university’s mission on the inclusion and success of all its students, and on a fundamental social responsibility to the communities ASU serves.

University President Michael M. Crow described the document as an expression of “the reason for the existence of the institution,” and one that re-imagines the role of a major university in the 21st century.

“The culture of a major, research-driven public university in the United States has been inextricably and forever altered to be focused on the success of the student and the success of the community,” Crow said. “Every asset of the individuals at ASU, every ounce of energy that they have, is devoted to those two things.”

The charter, announced in a presentation to the Trustees of ASU, comes 12 years after Crow’s appointment as president of ASU and is an articulation of his vision for the institution.

It defines ASU’s mandate as measuring success “not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes and how they succeed.”

“There’s no reason to say, ‘well that person can only do that’ or ‘this person can only do this,’” Crow said. “We’re trying to produce a person capable of learning anything.”

The charter, which is 46 words long, also presents a paradigmatic shift in the way a university can act as a force for good in Arizona, the country and the world.

The charter states that ASU will assume “fundamental responsibility for the economic, social, cultural and overall health of the communities it serves,” and that it will focus on “research and discovery of public value.”

Crow said ASU’s efforts to better the community can serve as an example for all of higher education.

“We can make our universities produce master learners more dedicated to the breadth of our society, more dedicated to the betterment of our society, more dedicated to the betterment of our democracy,” he said. “If we can do that, we will have had a major impact on the outcome of humanity.”

John Graham, chairman of the Trustees of ASU, described the charter as an important milestone in ASU’s history.

“Arizona State University is a relatively young institution, still evolving in terms of its goals and structure, but it has an unwavering focus on its core mission,” said Graham. "The establishment of this charter is a critical inflection point in ASU’s evolution as the New American University of the future.”

Over the next six years, ASU will seek to enhance its national reputation in academic quality and impact, and establish itself as global center for interdisciplinary research and development.

According to Crow, the charter is not merely setting a course for the future of ASU, but is in many ways making explicit what the university has already achieved.

“The students being produced at our university, regardless of their family circumstance, are as capable or more capable than the students being produced at any university,” he said.

$1.24M grant to help child sex trafficking victims

A five-year, $1.24 million grant will help to better identify children who are victims of sex trafficking in Arizona and provide training to child welfare professionals to improve outcomes.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children, Youth and Families awarded the funding to Dominique Roe-Sepowitz and Judy Krysik. Both are professors and researchers in the School of Social Work, part of the College of Public Programs at Arizona State University. The project will be a collaborative effort involving the ASU Office for Sex Trafficking Research Intervention, the ASU Center for Applied Behavioral Health Policy and the Arizona Department of Child Safety. Download Full Image

“We’re very excited to partner with the Arizona Department of Child Safety to develop a system-wide awareness of the commercial sexual exploitation of children,” says Roe-Sepowitz, director of the Office for Sex Trafficking Research Intervention. ”We look forward to helping child welfare workers prevent, identify and find appropriate treatment resources for victims of sex trafficking.“

The Office for Sex Trafficking Research Intervention provided training earlier this year to representatives of 32 Arizona agencies that deal with kids in the state’s juvenile delinquency system. A follow-up survey identified 161 sex trafficking victims who receive services through a juvenile court-approved program. The survey was considered a snapshot of the problem. The federal grant will allow researchers to more thoroughly examine the magnitude of children who are exploited through sex trafficking.

“The first aspect is to learn about how large the prevalence is of sex trafficking victimization that we see in children in child welfare,” Roe-Sepowitz says. “To be able to do that, we have to train child welfare workers how to recognize these situations.”

The project will include an annual statewide summit to increase community awareness of children who are sex trafficking victims. It will feature multiple days of clinical training for professionals in the child welfare system. The grant will also create a community work group that spans Arizona, allowing various agencies to discuss specific cases in the child welfare system.

“What we really want is that child welfare workers, number one, identify this is as a safety issue for youth,” says Roe-Sepowitz. “Number two, intervene as needed. Number three, if they understand there are risk factors that are specific for these kids – things like running away multiple times a year, having a history of childhood sexual abuse, teen dating violence, not having really high self-esteem, being drawn to boys or men who are older than them – those are some of the things that we know make someone more likely to be victimized in sex trafficking. So, if we can train child welfare workers to identify those predictors and then ask some extra questions, maybe we can prevent quite a number of victims.”